The Sagas of Icelanders, also known as family sagas, are a set of around 40 narratives based mostly on historical events that mostly took place in Iceland in the 9th, 10th, and early 11th centuries, during the so-called Saga Age.
However, they were written in the 13th and 14th centuries. Nobody knows who authored them; it’s likely the stories came from Iceland’s rich oral tradition, passed along verbally from one generation to the next, until someone committed them to text.
Like Homer’s The Iliad, the sagas seem to mix fiction and fact.
The Sagas remain an intrinsic part of Icelanders’ identity to this day, This physical document , traces the lives of its indigenous people during a one of Iceland’s most tumultuous time, an era when the Vikings were changing the shape of society across Northern Europe while Christianity and Paganism fighting it out to be the prevailing belief system.
Women also recorded in sagas such as Gudrid Thorbjarnardottir, believed to be the first person of European ancestry born in America. Seemingly hard as nails Freydís Eiríksdóttir , daughter of Erik the Red has a strong presence as well.
Freydis Eiríksdóttir was a fearless, strong-willed and brutal Viking woman who followed the first Norse settlers to North America and supposedly participated in the fight against hostile Natives.
There is archaeological evidence to back up some of the historic claims they make. Two sagas—titled The Saga of Erik the Red and The Saga of the Greenlanders—retell the adventures of a Viking named Leif Erikson.
Saint Brendan the Navigator, a well-traveled Irish abbot who died around 577 is considered another possibility of being the first European to come to the Americas.
Tales of his deeds remained popular after he died, and in the 9th century, his legend was bolstered by a Latin-language biography called The Voyage of St. Brendan.
According to The Voyage of St. Brendan, Brendan and a small crew took a leather-bound wooden sailboat and launched it from the Dingle Peninsula.
They went westward in search of the Garden of Eden—and, according to the book at least, he found it: Brendan landed on a beautiful island, stayed for a time, and then left when an angel told him to go back home.
Dismissed by some as religious folktale, there are those who think it’s based on a real, transatlantic voyage Brendan made (it’s been suggested that the paradise he found was either a Bahaman Island or North America’s eastern seaboard).
Either way it’s extremely interesting to me.
While I was researching my own family history , the ancestors who came to America wrote that to them , Gaelic was the language spoken in the Garden of Eden, so that is what they spoke at home and wrote as our early family history.
Erik Thorvaldson, better known as Erik the Red, had crimson hair and a rough childhood.
He was born in Norway, but when his father committed manslaughter there, the family was banished to Iceland, where Erik would go on to marry a rich woman and have four children—including a son he named Leif.
Unfortunately, Erik killed a neighbor in a skirmish and was temporarily exiled.
Instead of going back to Norway, Erik went west, settling in a huge, uninhabited region that another explorer had sighted a few years earlier.
Once his banishment was lifted in the year 985 CE, Erik decided to try and establish a new colony on the island he’d found. Luckily, he was a PR genius.
To entice others into moving there, he gave the place an appealing name: Greenland.
The strategy worked.
In Iceland and Scandinavia, the name Leif derives from Old Norse , meaning “heir” or “descendant.
It is usually pronounced “Layf” and rhymes with the English word safe (or like “life,” depending on the region).
Yet, in America, people often say “Leef” instead.
The sagas have little to say about Leif’s upbringing, but he was probably born in Iceland sometime between 970 and 980 CE and grew up in Greenland.
In 999 CE, Erik sent Leif to Norway so that he could work for as a royal bodyguard.
Tryggvason vigorously promoted the Christian religion, and he found an eager convert in Leif.
About 1000 AD, The monarch handed his bodyguard a special mission:
Preach Christianity in Greenland. Upon returning to his father’s island, Leif spread the gospel—with some difficulty.
His mother, Thjodhild, was quick to embrace the new faith.
She also insisted that a chapel be built near her Greenland home. On the other hand, Erik the Red refused to give up his Pagan beliefs.
Staves Norway, Viking church.
That proved to be a turn off and , Thjodhild stopped sleeping with Erik , which—according to one saga—“was a great trial to his temper.”
On his voyage to join Olaf Tryggvason, Leif’s crew got a bit lost and landed on the Hebrides near Scotland. Terrible weather forced the men to remain there for a month, and Leif got a lord’s daughter pregnant, then went to Norway and left her behind.
But when she gave birth to a son—a boy christened Thorgills Leifson—Leif agreed to raise him. Thorgills’s mother sent him away to live with Leif in Greenland.
At some point, Leif had another male child who was called Thorkel.
When Leif’s men begin their westward journey in The Saga of the Greenlanders,they soon discover an icy countryside filled with large, flat rocks. “
Now I will give the land a name, and call it Helluland,” Leif says in the text. Translated from Old Norse, the moniker means “stone-slab land.”
Based on the descriptions in the sagas of the Greenlanders and Erik the Red, most historians think Helluland was really Baffin Island which is Canada’s biggest and home to lemmings, caribou, and polar bears (and people). It might also be one of the three North American areas that the Icelandic Sagas reference -Norse artifacts have been found there.
Baffin Island : present day
In The Saga of Erik the Red, Leif parts ways with King Olaf and then discovers the American continent while journeying back to Greenland.
(Apparently, he veered off-course.) The Saga of the Greenlanders tells it differently. This text maintains that, one day, a trader named Bjarni Herjólfsson caught sight of the landmass from his ship but didn’t go ashore.
Bjarni began telling tales about this strange new place, and Leif, fascinated by the story, bought Bjarni’s vessel and set out to locate the mysterious land with a 35-man crew. Over the course of an adventurous summer, he did just that.
And unlike Bjarni, Leif explored the place on foot.
Mt Thor Baffin Island
After leaving Helluland, the Vikings went south. Their next stop was a timber-filled expanse which received the name Markland, or “land of wood.”
The sagas report that Markland was south of Helluland but north of a third area that the Nordics named Vinland. Generally, Markland is thought to have been a portion of Canada’s Labrador coast.
Wherever it was, we know that Greenlanders continued to visit the place well into the 1300s.
That’s because one document from 1347 mentions a ship that had recently stopped in Markland—though there are no specific details about its location.
The location of Vinland is a total mystery. In the sagas, it’s described as a vast area with a prized commodity: grape vines. Salmon, game animals, and wild grasses were also said to be present.
In Vinland, Leif’s party built a settlement, where they spent the winter before journeying back to Greenland.
Subsequent Viking forays into Vinland are mentioned in the Icelandic sagas. But at some point, Nordics stopped going to Vinland. Today’s historians argue about where the place once stood, but in 1960, archaeologists found what turned out to be a Viking-made settlement in Newfoundland.
The site is named L’Anse aux Meadows—and according to radiometric dating, it was built between 990 and 1030 CE and was occupied for around 10 years.
That lines up neatly with the timeline of events in Leif’s story from the Icelandic Sagas , but some experts argue that it was just an offshoot of that legendary colony and would have served as a waystation for seafaring travelers.
Others think the site might be Markland rather than any part of Vinland.
Erik the Red didn’t accompany his son to North America, and he died shortly after Leif returned to Greenland.
By then, the island’s population had exploded to around 2400 people.
When he became chieftain, Leif put his voyaging years behind him.
We don’t know when he died, but it was probably before 1025 CE, when Leif’s son Thorkel succeeded him as chieftain.
In The Saga of the Greenlanders, we’re treated to a disturbing tale about Erik the Red’s daughter, Freydis (who The Saga of Erik the Red tells us was illegitimate).
The exact date of Freydis Eiriksdottir’s birth is unknown but it is estimated she was born between the years 970-980 AD.
While Leif was presiding as Greenland’s chieftain, she and her husband Thorvard undertook a voyage to the New World with two brothers named Helgi and Finnbogi.
For a few months, the couple lived in Vinland, and it was not a pleasant time. One day, Freydis told Thorvard that Helgi and Finnbogi had beaten her (which the saga says was a lie), and demanded that he kill the men.
Helgi and Finnbogi were living at a separate campsite along with several other Vikings.
Thorvard, Freydis, and many of their neighbors headed to the camp, where all the men there were slain.
But that didn’t satisfy Freydis, who grabbed an axe and proceeded to massacre the camp’s unarmed women. Upon her return to Greenland, Leif heard about this atrocity but couldn’t bring himself to punish his half-sibling.
Freydis Eiriksdottir is mentioned in two Norse Sagas, the Saga of the Greenlanders and the Saga of Erik the Red. Her brother (or half-brother) was the great Viking explorer Leif Erikson. Her two other brothers were Thorstein and Torvald.
There is no doubt Freydis Eiriksdottir inherited her temper from him and she was a troublesome Viking woman in many ways. She was a large woman who eemed to fear nothing.
She and her husband Torvard, who was described as a weakling lived in Gardar.
Like many Vikings, Freydis was very fond of goods and gold. She also inherited her desire for exploration from her father and she traveled to Vinland (North America) on two occasions. The Greenland settlement was not entirely self-sufficient.
There was marginal land for raising cattle and sheep during the medieval warm climate.
The real attraction of Greenland was the hunting, especially for arctic specialties of furs, walrus (ivory), polar bear, and gyrfalcons, which were prized luxury items on the continent.
Some trade with the natives apparently existed, though the Greenlanders never established the same relationship they had with Sámi, for example.
Shield Maiden Freydis Eiriksdottir Encounters Native Americans In Vinland
Around the year 1004, Freydis Eiriksdottir joined Thorfinn Karlsefni, an Icelandic explorer and made her first journey to Vinland. It was an expedition that ended in a fight with Native Americans.
Vikings made an attempt to trade with the North American natives, which the Norse called Skraelings, but it resulted in a failure and chaos.
The settlement on Vinland was short-lived, lasting only a few years. Conflicts with the natives (Skraelings) possibly hastened its demise.The settlements on Greenland lasted from 985 to 1350 (Western Settlement) then to (Eastern Settlement). Cause of abandonment is unclear.
In the evening, Native Americans attacked the Viking camp and shots from possibly catapults were fired at the Norse warriors. According to the descriptions in the Norse Sagas the weapon was a rod which gave an unusual sound when it was waved in the air. 
The Vikings who had never seen such a weapon in their life fled, but one warrior remained refusing to give up the fight – Erik the Red’s courageous daughter.
She was eight months pregnant at the time, but her physical condition did not stop her from taking on the Native Americans.
She called out, “Why run you away from such worthless creatures, stout men that ye are, when, as seems to me likely, you might slaughter them like so many cattle?
Let me but have a weapon; I think I could fight better than any of you.”
But Thorfinn Karlsefni’s Viking warriors ignored her call as they tried to vanish from the battlefield.
What the shieldmaiden Freydis Eiriksdottir did next was unexpected and completely startled the local fighters.
She grabbed the sword of Thorbrand, Snorri’s son who had died in battle, bared her chest at her enemies, beating her breasts with the flat of her sword and screaming bloody murder.
Freydis Eiriksdottir was surrounded by Skraelings but she showed no signs of fear.
Seeing this wild, pregnant shield maiden threating them with a foreign weapon was too much for the Native American Indians who run off.
Freydis Eiriksdottir’s Ugly Lies Lead To Murder
After this adventure, Freydis Eiriksdottir returned back to Greenland, but she heard expeditions to Vinland led by Leif Erikson, Torvard Erikson and Thorfinn Karlsefni had been successful and she wanted to be part of the Vikings’ exploration.
Statue of Freydis Eiriksdottir in Reykjavik, Iceland. Image credit: History Naked
She convinced two Icelandic men, Helgi and Finnbogi who were to brothers to lead a private expedition to Vinland with her and share all the profits half-and-half. Being a cunning and evil woman, Freydis Eiriksdottir double crossed them. She beat herself so that it would appear as if she had been ill-treated.
Returning to her husband, she told him the two Icelandic brothers had offended her and beaten her. She demanded revenge. Her husband Torvard must avenge the men or she will leave him, she declared.
Left without much option, Torvard murdered Helgi and Finnbogi, but he saved the lives of the women. This made Freydis Eiriksdottir furious. She grabbed an axe and killed all five women herself. Then, she forced all for people to swear to keep the brutal events secret, or she will kill them all.
Her brother Leif Eriksson sensed something is wrong. He tortured three of his sister’s men to learn the truth.
When Leif learned about the horrible massacre his sister was guilty of he wants to kill her, but he cannot because even though it’s obvious she deserved, she was nevertheless his sister.
In the Greenlander Saga she is painted as an evil, cunning, bad, greedy woman. She married for money and used her husband to get her way. The Saga of Erik the red presents a more balanced approach.
Rather bizarrely, The Saga of Erik the Red treats Freydis as a hero for fighting off an attack by native North Americans and never mentions her as a murderer. It’s unknown which saga is closer to the truth. There is no more information about what happened to Erik the Red’s daughter.